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Are cloud-based file-sharing services too immature for the enterprise?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 26-Jan-2012

We've just released an advisory paper, "Are cloud-based file-sharing services too immature for the enterprise?” ... Continue Reading

File Encryption Compromises in the Cloud

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 21-Jan-2012

There is of course much interest these days in both the cloud and more general usage of hosted/off-premise environments for managing electronic documents. Indeed it's an area that we have been receiving many more inquiries from our advisory service customers over this past year. Yet despite the interest, one area I find few buyers investigate thoroughly enough is that of file encryption ... Continue Reading

ECM Market Analysis Report 2012

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Jan-2012

We have recently published our Document Management - ECM Market Analysis for 2012, and as a where-is-the-marketplace-headed snapshot, I think it's an interesting one.  I have been writing these since the late 1990s and it's one of several analyst tasks that I really look forward to ... Continue Reading

Why Enterprise Search is not in the limelight

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 18-Jan-2012

In the enterprise search community there has been a lot of talk recently about the lack of deep coverage by major analyst firms such as Gartner and Forrester.  Many feel slighted and believe that their industry is a large and thriving one, one that is unjustly ignored ... Continue Reading

EMC Documentum vs IBM FileNet vs Oracle WebCenter Content?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 21-Nov-2011

Recently I fulfilled a lifelong ambition to be an actor (minor parts - small films) and I finally came to understand the meaning of the thespian question, "What is my motivation?"

It is an important question that we probably don't ask enough, and buyers might want to ask the same of ECM (Enterprise Content Management) suppliers. Yes, seriously ... Continue Reading

Is Box.Net a threat to SharePoint?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Nov-2011

We've just published an advisory paper for our ECM and SharePoint subscribers (non subscribers can purchase it here) analyzing the implications of large enterprise buyers considering Box.Net alongside Microsoft SharePoint ... Continue Reading

SharePoint exposes lack of information management commitment

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 11-Nov-2011

Last week we ran the SharePoint Symposium in Washington DC and kicked off the two-day event with a question to the audience.  What single word best describes "SharePoint" to you?  The preponderance of negative answers thrown out surprised us ... Continue Reading

Oracle-Endeca, HP-Autonomy, and Coveo follow the customer

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-Nov-2011

Enterprise Search engines can be divided neatly into two categories: those optimized for website search and those optimized for searching across internal information silos. Today the gap between the two is opening ever wider ... Continue Reading

Not coming clean about Enterprise Search

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 26-Oct-2011

I have just spent two days at the inaugural European Enterprise Search Summit in London, and left with much to think and rant about.  For I listened to a series of consultants and vendors telling the audience that enterprise search was an imperative ... Continue Reading

Case Management and the Lexmark acquisition of BPM vendor Pallas Athena

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Oct-2011

Yesterday we learned that Lexmark, best know for its printers, had acquired Netherlands-based BPM (Business Process Management) vendor Pallas-Athena. This follows in the path of Lexmark's acquisition of Perceptive Software, a document management company (evaluated in our Document Management reviews) ... Continue Reading

Enterprise Search London - talking HP and Autonomy...

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Oct-2011

Next week I will be speaking at the inaugural Enterprise Search Europe event in London 24/25th October, organized by our good friends at InfoToday and Martin White of Intranet Focus Ltd.

My talk will provide an analysis of the current European Search Market, drawn from our extensive research in this area. If you are ... Continue Reading

Oracle acquires Endeca - our first take....

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 18-Oct-2011

Oracle has announced its intention to buy Endeca, a major independent purveyor of Enterprise Search technology. It's not in the least bit surprising as Autonomy (arguably Endeca's biggest rival) had been in talks with Oracle prior to their acquisition by HP, and from that alone it was clear that Oracle was interested in acquiring advanced search technology ... Continue Reading

From Vignette to Microsoft - Web Content Management Orthodoxy

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Oct-2011

Below is an excerpt from an interview I had with with Australian journalist David Walker. I thought it worth re-publishing here too. In a wide ranging chat undertaken whilst I was grumpy and jetlagged we discussed amongst other things Interwoven (now Autonomy soon to be HP), Vignette (OpenText), and Microsoft ... Continue Reading

Microsoft SharePoint in 2011 - 2012: State of the Nation Webinar

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Sep-2011

Next Wednesday I will be hosting a free SharePoint-themed webinar. My intent is to look at SharePoint in 2011, its victories to date and its challenges ahead. ... Continue Reading

HP and Autonomy - a marriage made in hell?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-Sep-2011

This past week HP fired their CEO Leo Apotheker, making him the third CEO in a row to part with HP prematurely. But of all the departures this one one is the least surprising by far. His announcement that he was to buy Autonomy for a staggering $10.3 Billion -- far more than anyone else figured the firm was worth -- and spin of its market leading PC division was surely the most spectacular act of self-immolation in a long time ... Continue Reading

Understanding Autonomy's Family Tree

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Sep-2011

Since HP decided to buy Autonomy for just over $10 Billion dollars, there has been a lot of discussion over the acquisitions that Autonomy itself made over the years to expand its portfolio of products and grow its revenues. ... Continue Reading

Another look at the Autonomy IDOL OEM business

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 29-Aug-2011

Now that HP has announced its intent to buy Autonomy, the deal has come under a lot of scrutiny.  One area though that few have yet to look at in detail -- and of particular interest to us as buyers' advocates -- is the whole topic of the IDOL search OEM business ... Continue Reading

HP plus Autonomy equals Buyers Beware

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Aug-2011

I cannot say that the acquisition by HP of search giant Autonomy bodes well. Taking the parties' past histories into account, this simply doesn't seem to be a good long term match. Hence my advice is ... Continue Reading

Do we need more ECM Maturity Models?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 16-Aug-2011

The research and consulting giant Gartner recently released a maturity model for ECM (Enterprise Content Management). Since its release (it's an overhaul of an earlier model), I have had a number of people point out to me the similarities between it and the open source maturity model for ECM that we contribute to, called ECM3, which is now a part of MIKE2.0 ... Continue Reading

How to get yourself thrown off a technology selection list

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 18-Jul-2011

When you advise customers selecting software, as we do, on occasion you run into very awkward and difficult situations.  Recently we've seen more cases in which we (RSG) are advising buyers, and software vendors bidding on an RFP process have contacted us directly to elicit information and advice, or in two particular cases to try to bribe us ... Continue Reading

Open Text acquires Global360 - Good for Buyers?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Jul-2011

OpenText today announced that they are to buy Texas based-SharePoint partner Global360.  Most acquisitions like this end up becoming quite disruptive for you the customer.  Is this one any different? ... Continue Reading

More Emerging Standards for ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Jul-2011

I was really happy last week to see that the long-awaited British Standards Institution Code of Practice (PAS 89) for ECM has been made available for public comment and review ... Continue Reading

The ECM skills shortage continues

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Jun-2011

It's a discussion that reoccurs regularly enough with Real Story Group Document Management (ECM) subscribers -- how do I get skilled ECM staff? It's a tough question to answer ... Continue Reading

Capture Software needs an RFP process too

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 21-Jun-2011

Capture is an area of the ECM spectrum that often falls under the radar, despite the huge advances made in this area of technology over the past few years. Nowadays, capture accuracy rates are regularly in the high 90s percentagewise, while form recognition and consequent processing has become incredibly fast and accurate ... Continue Reading

Capture plus workflow equals ECM?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-Jun-2011

Capture + workflow = ECM.

It's a simple formula that works most of the time in enterprise environments. It works for the simple reason that most electronic documents that require organizational attention typically are captured and proceed down a structured workflow ... Continue Reading

The technology buying process - vertical expertise

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 27-May-2011

One of the most common questions an enterprise technology buyer will ask of a vendor or supplier is, "What do you know about our business?" It's the kind of question that one gets asked in job interviews too, and just like that personal situation, how the question gets answered can have a huge impact on the result ... Continue Reading

Moreq2010 a DOD5015 slayer?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-May-2011

Vendors claim DOD5015 compliance, but few organizations actually use the systems in a DOD5015 compliant manner. In short it is an over-arching standard that demands a particularly complex and cumbersome working methodology ... Continue Reading

Autonomy makes yet another acquisition

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 16-May-2011

Well, it has been almost a year since Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch announced that his firm was to make a major acquisition. Today it happened. ... Continue Reading

Enterprise Search - the best and worst of times

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-May-2011

I have been attending and speaking at the Enterprise Search Summit in New York this week, a good conference with many opportunities to rub shoulders and pick the brains of smart folk. But it's also an event that gives me a sense of deja-vu, since so little appears to change in the world of search. In fact I am fairly convinced that I could pull out a presentation from a decade back, brush off the dust, and present it with a straight face today ... Continue Reading

Enterprise Search Bloat

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Apr-2011

Today I was thinking about search tools -- and adjacent topics such as content/business analytics -- and all the different situations that today's enterprise search engines find themselves involved in ... Continue Reading

Is SharePoint up to the challenge of Records Management?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Apr-2011

Last week we published an advisory paper for our ECM subscribers that analyzes some of the key challenges and limitations of using SharePoint's native services for Records Management (RM).  The briefing focuses on the standard configurations supplied by Microsoft, outside of third-party software options. Here's the outline ... Continue Reading

ECM - from search to analytics

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 31-Mar-2011

I led a session at last week's Info360 event in Washington DC called "ECM & BI - a Shotgun Marriage."  I was unsure about it from the get-go, as my fear was that I would spend 45 minutes essentially making a single point: that these two things are largely incompatible. What actually transpired was a bit more interesting ... Continue Reading

SharePoint 2010 and NKOTB

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 30-Mar-2011

Over the past few weeks I have been seriously challenged to revisit and reassess my views around SharePoint. As an analyst it is all too easy to fall into the trap of studying a topic, coming to a conclusion (hopefully the right one) and then sticking with that conclusion. Time and the steady pace of progress eventually change everything, and SharePoint is no different in this regard ... Continue Reading

Cloud on the rack

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Mar-2011

What could have been a snoozefest in fact turned into a full-on attack of the value and promise of Cloud Computing ... Continue Reading

Second Look at SharePoint as an ECM Platform

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-Mar-2011

This past week in Los Angeles I spent a little time talking with three well established ECM (Enterprise Content Management) integrators and resellers.  All three had started out business more than ten years ago, and had initially specialized in building and implementing solutions for the likes of Documentum, FileNet, Hyland, and OpenText ... Continue Reading

SharePoint leadership starts with a SharePoint strategy

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 25-Feb-2011

On the 28th and 29th March, my colleague Jarrod Gingras and I will be hosting the inaugural SharePoint Strategy Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona ... Continue Reading

DAM Webinar this week

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Feb-2011

This Thursday 17 February I'll be hosting a free webinar focused on Digital Asset Management (DAM) product selection. I hope you can join me ... Continue Reading

We are hiring in Sales, Marketing, and More

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Feb-2011

The Real Story Group continues to grow, and so we are currently looking to fill a number of vacancies ... Continue Reading

OpenText acquires BPM vendor Metastorm

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Feb-2011

I can hardly believe it (joking) but OpenText has acquired yet another technology company (first picked up by my colleague Irina yesterday). This time around it is US-based BPM (Business Process Management) firm Metastorm ... Continue Reading

ECM in Healthcare Today

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 1-Feb-2011

There is no more challenging an environment for true ECM (Enterprise Content Management) than that of healthcare ... Continue Reading

EMC-Documentum continues to anger with impromptu audits

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Jan-2011

When I wrote about EMC imposing audits on long-term Documentum customers in February 2009, I received several communications from very disgruntled customers. I posited that this was a bad way of going about business, and figured EMC would temper their policing a bit. But it seems I was wrong. Despite customer fury, EMC and KPMG continue to invoke out-of-the-blue audits on some of their best licensees. ... Continue Reading

The high cost of Microsoft SharePoint

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 10-Jan-2011

Microsoft estimates that you the customer will spend a total of $6.2 Billion will spent on services related to SharePoint in 2011. According to my rough estimate, you can add $1.7 Billion in 2011 SharePoint license revenue on top. This for a product that many sales folk continue to tout as low cost, and sometimes even as free ... Continue Reading

2011 Document and Records Management Market Analysis

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 5-Jan-2011

Today we published our analysis of the 2011 Document & Records Management marketplace, including our "Cross-Check" review of buyer risk ... Continue Reading

Oracle goes its own way with ECM Suite 11g

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Dec-2010

Just as Microsoft has its own very distinctive approach and definition for ECM, so too does Oracle. In fact as time goes on, Oracle's approach to ECM is becoming more individual and distinctive ... Continue Reading

Changes to Autonomy iManage WorkSite

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Dec-2010

The longtime document and records management product iManage WorkSite has had a turbulent history: launched in the dot-com boom years, it quickly found an enthusiastic customer base in the Legal sector. Acquired by Interwoven in 2003 it carried on much as before with relatively little interference from the web-centric management at Interwoven. But things change ... Continue Reading

ECM to Cross the Chasm?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Dec-2010

Yesterday our friends over at AIIM (Association of Imaging and Information Management) hosted a webinar that presented new work by sales & marketing guru Geoffrey Moore called A Future History of Content Management: "A Social Business Revolution" ... Continue Reading

Develop the Right Shortlist with an RFI

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Dec-2010

We have a new new advisory paper out called "Develop the Right Shortlist with an RFI" that hits on a key gap in many procurement processes. For with most prospective content technology buyers, great effort gets expended on an RFP process at the cost of the RFI. In fact, there often is no RFI. This is a mistake ... Continue Reading

SharePoint maturing into 2011?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 26-Nov-2010

Last week I helped my colleague Tony Byrne host the SharePoint Symposium in Washington DC. We ran many of sessions there and had a good turnout at each, hardly surprising of course as SharePoint remains a very hot topic ... Continue Reading

Transactional Document Management - The core of ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 24-Nov-2010

"Transactional document management" is a term not used often enough in my opinion. For it is, as the phrase goes, the "meat and potatoes" of ECM ... Continue Reading

Our ECM Maturity Model meets MIKE2.0

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 18-Nov-2010

ECM3 is without a doubt the most successful maturity model for ECM, with downloads of the model passing the 5,000 mark recently ... Continue Reading

EMC Documentum Family Tree

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 10-Nov-2010

It seems timely to publish our EMC-Documentum family tree, as there has been a change in senior management there recently. I try not to comment too much on vendor personnel changes, since change is natural enough and people move on, but I think this one is worth an exception ... Continue Reading

Mobile Content Webinar Wednesday

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Nov-2010

No content management supplier today can start or end a sales pitch without a mention of mobile. Whether they be large ECM vendors talking about access to your secure documents on your Blackberry, or a B2C oriented web content management vendors discussing rich media delivery to the iPad ... Continue Reading

Updated ECM evaluations

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 5-Nov-2010

We've just updated several vendor evaluations in our Enterprise Content Management Report: ... Continue Reading

Dev-Test-Live for your CMS too

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 27-Oct-2010

There are some things in life that just shouldn't be considered optional, like deploying a web content management system in a three-stage Development-Test-Production environment, or even four, with Staging thrown in. Most enterprises run their actual websites and web applications in ... Continue Reading

Why software vendors acquire others

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Oct-2010

My post yesterday about Autonomy reminded me to explain a bit more about software vendor "roll-ups" and what they really mean to you the customer ... Continue Reading

Should you be worried about Autonomy?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Oct-2010

In the past week mega-vendor Autonomy saw its share price plummet by 20% -- a huge drop by anyone's standards. Much discussed in the financial press, it's also news that will be much discussed and publicized by Autonomy's competitors ... Continue Reading

How SharePoint swept Brazil

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 29-Sep-2010

I find traveling and speaking at industry events a huge opportunity to engage with people and get a feel for what is really going on in the broader user community. And in my third trip to Brazil for the ECMShow I can report with confidence that a whole lot is going on here ... Continue Reading

The high cost of support

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-Sep-2010

In many end-user organizations, software support fees can make up the bulk of the yearly IT budget. This is hardly surprising when vendors typically like to calculate support contracts on the basis of ~20% of list pricing per annum, in perpetuity ... Continue Reading

Vamosa to stop going

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 20-Sep-2010

Vamosa means "let's go" in Spanish, and sadly the UK-based content migration technology firm Vamosa is indeed going...away ... Continue Reading

DAM Conference in New York next week

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Sep-2010

Next week (Thursday 23rd) I will be in New York to speak at the new Creatasphere DAM conference. I must confess I am really looking forward to this particular event as it sort of kicks off my personal event season, and does so in some style ... Continue Reading

Is an HP Governance Engine what the market really needs?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Sep-2010

HP has been offering Document and Records Management (RM) for two years. Yet, buyers typically don't short-list the vendor, and many don't even know that HP has an offering in this space ... Continue Reading

What makes The Real Story Group different?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Sep-2010

Our product evaluations are here for one purpose alone -- to provide buyers with truly independent, technical, and critical assessments of the products they are considering. What this means in practice is that some products get added to our services, and others quietly get dropped ... Continue Reading

ECM TALK - A New Podcast Series

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Sep-2010

Before speaking at industry events I often post a blog asking people to come along and say hello in person. In London a few months back James Lappin did just that, and though I knew of James as an Records Management (RM) expert by reputation, I had not actually met him in person ... Continue Reading

Hyland acquires Hershey Software

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 1-Sep-2010

Ok you probably did a double take when you saw that Hyland had acquired Hershey's. Sadly the world of chocolate and ECM are not about to merge. ... Continue Reading

When 66KB really equals 4.12MB

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 1-Sep-2010

Just as Route 66 in the United States has taken on a mythical status, 66KB is begining to take on the same legendary status in my own little world of ECM ... Continue Reading

Making sense of IT gibberish

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Aug-2010

Explaining technical concepts -- which are often quite abstract -- can be quite a challenge. So at the Real Story Group we often try to be creative in how we go about explaining things ... Continue Reading

IBM Acquires Datacap - First Take

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 10-Aug-2010

Today IBM announced the acquisition of Datacap. It was no surprise really as Big Blue has been talking for a while about enhancing their overall imaging offering, to better leverage advanced case management ... Continue Reading

Document Asset Management?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Aug-2010

You probably see a variety of overlapping terms to describe the management of content.  One example is "assets" -- aren't all content items assets of one kind or another? ... Continue Reading

Cri Du Coeur for Records Management

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Aug-2010

If you were to trust in the marketing swill that comes out of the vendor and analyst community these days, you would believe that large organizations are not just embracing ERM (Electronic Records Management) but that they are positively hugging and kissing it too ... Continue Reading

Updated ECM evaluations released

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 20-Jul-2010

Today we are releasing a fairly substantial update to our ECM evaluation research. Over the past few months we have been looking in detail into product changes across some of the larger and better known ECM suite vendors ... Continue Reading

ECM Price Lists: Why the Secrecy?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Jul-2010

Yesterday morning I was reading through Oracle's recently updated price list (yes my Monday mornings really are that exciting). I was thinking that I have long valued the fact that I can access simple, clear and open prices from major vendors like Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. I might occasionally gasp at the prices listed ... Continue Reading

Justifying the cost of e-government

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Jul-2010

There is an outcry in the UK at the moment over the cost of building and maintaining Government websites. The figures released by the government relating to individual department website costs ... Continue Reading

ECM co-existence and the vuvuzela

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 25-Jun-2010

I'm in the middle of reviewing feedback for a number of ECM product evaluations that I'm presently updating.  The upgrade from minor version to minor version (1.7 to 1.8 etc) is usually heralded by loud marketing cries from the suppliers. Closer inspection though tends to reveal fixes and gaps plugged, rather than anything revolutionary ... Continue Reading

UK Budget Cuts and Public Sector IT

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Jun-2010

In the UK today, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne will announce his emergency budget details. The one thing we know in advance is that this will contain some of the most severe cuts in recent history ... Continue Reading

ECM Awards in Africa and the UK

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 21-Jun-2010

One of the fun aspects of being an analyst is that people ask you to judge things.  Though we refrain from categorizing "best" products and vendors, judging actual projects that exemplify good information management practice is always ... Continue Reading

Day 4 UK Roadshow - more SharePoint indifference

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-Jun-2010

So here we are in London, the last stop on the UK ECM roadshow. London is certainly the biggest and busiest of the four events, with more from the private sector than public sector at this one ... Continue Reading

Automating manual processes - is it always worth the effort?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-Jun-2010

For IT professionals it is taken as a matter of faith that automation improves efficiency, that making paper based documents and processes electronic is, in and of itself, a default benefit. But experience in the real world paints a more mixed and problematic picture ... Continue Reading

Day 3 UK Roadshow - Savvy Buyers

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 16-Jun-2010

Theme of the day? Difficult to say really, but if I were to choose two it would be the content chaos and archiving ... Continue Reading

Day 2 UK Roadshow - SharePoint skepticism

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Jun-2010

Day 2 of the UK AIIM Roadshow and we are here at the Reebok Stadium Bolton (home of Bolton Wanderers football club). Theme of today amongst the attendees seems to be ... Continue Reading

UK roadshow diary Day One - dynamic publishing

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Jun-2010

Day One of the AIIM UK Roadshow started in Glasgow, a place I know pretty well. The sessions were followed by a long but stunningly beautiful drive down ... Continue Reading

See you at the UK ECM Roadshow

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 10-Jun-2010

Just a note to say that I will be at each of upcoming AIIM UK Roadshow the week of the 14th June. I will be giving the closing keynote each day ... Continue Reading

Autonomy buys CA Information Governance - A First Take

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Jun-2010

Autonomy today announced that it has acquired CA's (formerly Computer Associates) Information Governance assets. These consist primarily of two main products ... Continue Reading

No magic in eDiscovery

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Jun-2010

In the American corporate world, eDiscovery is the "pain du jour," as requests to find and turn over documents grow exponentially ... Continue Reading

The case for Case Management - and Business Intelligence

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Jun-2010

Both IBM and now EMC have recently touted their improved Case Management capabilities, so I thought it timely to take a look at this area in a little more detail ... Continue Reading

Video: Meeting the System Integrator

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Jun-2010

I was myself once a systems integrator, and many of my friends still work for systems integrators. This is my roundabout way of saying sorry in advance for the following video ... Continue Reading

Multiple document silos - where to start?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 31-May-2010

Virtually every customer of ours manages multiple document repositories. The document volumes stored in these repositories can get enormous; even smaller organizations can produce millions of documents, while the largest run to billions ... Continue Reading

More ECM fun - with SharePointing

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 27-May-2010

... Continue Reading

The ECM salesperson and buyer -- part 1

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 24-May-2010

The world of document management is not one that most people associate with fun, laughter and good times. It has been described (by me on occasion) as about as exciting as watching paint dry ... Continue Reading

Open Text as a potential fit for heterogeneous environments

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-May-2010

We have been updating our evaluation of Open Text for ECM this week, and I was musing with my colleague Apoorv that although Open Text is one of the largest ECM vendors in the market ... Continue Reading

One document management vendor to rule them all?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 18-May-2010

Case in point: Today I chatted with the good people of Elkhart County, Indiana, about their experience of trying to consolidate all their document management needs to a single provider ... Continue Reading

EMC Documentum for your Case Management?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-May-2010

One of the more interesting and surprising things to emerge from last week's EMC World event in Boston was that the core Documentum Content Server has been repositioned into the xCP (Intelligent Case Management) product stack. ... Continue Reading

EMC rebrands CMA (aka ECM) to IIG

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-May-2010

It seems to be acronym soup week, and though we can all be guilty of cooking this particular recipe at times, EMC is becoming a master chef ... Continue Reading

Shared Drive Addiction

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 11-May-2010

I have been in the document management business for over 20 years now, and though on the one hand ECM and Document Management technology has moved into the mainstream, in other regards it remains in the dark ages ... Continue Reading

ECM Family Trees, Part 3 - Autonomy

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 10-May-2010

So onto number three in our family tree mini-series, Autonomy. As a Brit that lives in the US, I find Autonomy an interesting vendor to watch ... Continue Reading

CMIS - An important standard for buyers of ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 6-May-2010

CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Specification) has been ratified as a standard by OASIS. What is it and what does it mean to buyers and users of ECM and Document Management technology? ... Continue Reading

UK ECM Roadshow in June

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 5-May-2010

One of the events that I most looking forward to this year is the AIIM UK Roadshow - 14-17 June ... Continue Reading

ECM Family Trees Part 2 - EMC Documentum

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Apr-2010

Let's move onto number two in our mini-series of ECM "family trees," EMC Documentum. (The first tree was Open Text.) ... Continue Reading

ECM Market Analysis Released

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Apr-2010

We've just published our 2010 ECM and Document Management Market Analysis, and it makes for fascinating reading ... Continue Reading

ECM Suite Family Trees, Part 1 - Open Text

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Apr-2010

This week I have been heads down reviewing RFP responses for a large ECM project. These vendor proposals could give readers the misimpression that the products in a complex suite of modules were all designed on the same drawing board ... Continue Reading

Records Management on the rise?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Apr-2010

I just finished reading an excellent article in Hedge Funds Review called "Records management in the new regulatory environment." It's piece that echoes much the same message I've been preaching for years now: ... Continue Reading

Professional services for ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Apr-2010

A common question asked by our advisory customers is whether they should use a software vendors' professional services arm. ... Continue Reading

Self Service Document Management

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Apr-2010

When trying to explain what Document Management is to friends and family curious about my work, I often give ask them to think about the last time they visited the doctor or a hospital ... Continue Reading

Big vendors dominate the ECM and Document Management Market

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 6-Apr-2010

This past week I have been working to update our ECM and Document Management market analysis ... Continue Reading

Oracle 11g Imaging and Process Management makes a 3-horse race

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 25-Mar-2010

When Oracle acquired Stellent in 2006 I thought the best piece of technology they got their hands on was the imaging tools that Stellent had themselves previously acquired from Optika ... Continue Reading

ECM Marketplace trends talk at Info360-AIIM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-Mar-2010

I almost had a heart attack today when I realized that Info360 (previously AIIM Expo) is less than a month away. This year will be particularly busy for me as ... Continue Reading

Holistic Information Management

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-Mar-2010

Whilst recently working on a change management initiative for one of our multinational clients, I had a bit of an "aha!" moment. I was in the midst of explaining to the assembled team members how their future information management system ... Continue Reading

Evaluating vendor proposals - Kill your spreadsheets

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Mar-2010

As you may know, a lot of our work at the Real Story Group involves helping people make the right information management buying decisions. Not surprisingly, one of the most common areas where our customers seek our counsel is with vendor scoring and assessment methodologies ... Continue Reading

FileNet P8 on your iPhone

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 24-Feb-2010

We wrote just the other week about the potential of using devices such as Apple's iPad for accessing enterprise documents. What seemed like good idea for the future turns out to be almost in the here and now ... Continue Reading

Open Source is not always cheaper

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-Feb-2010

On the document-management shortlist of a mid sized publishing firm this month lay four bidders: a specialist incumbent, two household name vendors (IBM & Microsoft), and an open source option ... Continue Reading

Google - unsuitable for the enterprise

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Feb-2010

For years now Google has played fast and loose with information confidentiality and privacy issues. As if further proof were needed ... Continue Reading

SAP, EMC, and Open Text - Who cares?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Feb-2010

Over the last few weeks there has been a flurry of media interest in the fact that SAP is reselling EMC Documentum and Open Text products. It's a flurry (bordering on blizzard) that is of little or no relevance to actual buyers of these software products ... Continue Reading

Keeping it Real

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Feb-2010

Welcome to the Real Story Group! For my colleagues and I this is an exciting time, and part of a continuing adventure that I hope you will join. ... Continue Reading

The value of the AS IS in Information Management Change

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 21-Feb-2010

One of the founding principals of business process change is the concept of understanding and defining the current "As Is" situation, before analyzing it and then constructing an ideal "To Be" situation. ... Continue Reading

ROI calculations are a joke

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Feb-2010

Our colleagues over at Forrester recently undertook some interesting research regarding content management investment attitudes in 2010 (DM, RM and WCM). The overall finding was along the lines one might expect ... Continue Reading

An iPad for DM and RM?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 5-Feb-2010

The launch of Apple's iPad last week has caught the imagination of armchair critics worldwide ... Continue Reading

Vendor Tip: perform some basic research before disqualifying prospects

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Feb-2010

Our job here is to advise buyers of technology, never vendors. But today I am going to make an exception and give the vendors out there a solid tip. Do your homework before responding to RFPs ... Continue Reading

SAP to resell EMC Documentum

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 2-Feb-2010

Last week SAP announced that it would begin reselling EMC Documentum products to the Insurance and Finance industries. It's not a world-shaking announcement, but it is interesting for one simple reason: ... Continue Reading

DAM moves - Tata acquires BT Mosaic

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 18-Jan-2010

Today the Indian IT services giant Tata announced that it was to acquire BT Mosaic. It's an acquisition worth examining in a little more detail, since we will likely see more of the same over the coming years. ... Continue Reading

Who remembers the Deep Web?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Jan-2010

I heard the words "Deep Web" used this week at an industry gathering. It's something I have not heard in quite a while, and looking around me in the room I figured that few people there had any idea what this term actually refers to ... Continue Reading

It is Document Management from here on in...

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Jan-2010

At CMS Watch we frequently have to explain to people why we have separate research streams for WCM (Web Content Management) and ECM (Enterprise Content Management). The explanation is frequently a response to the question, "aren't they just the same thing?" The simple answer is no, they are not ... Continue Reading

Three reasons to list CMIS in your Document Management RFP

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Dec-2009

First off let me state boldly and clearly CMIS is an important document management (a.k.a., ECM) standard, the most important standard. But if your world is solely one of HTML and CSS then you can stop reading right here ... Continue Reading

New Research on the ECM/Document Management Mid-Market

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-Nov-2009

Today we release some new ECM research. It focuses (as does much of our broader research) on the so called mid-market. ‘Mid’ is a terribly misleading term ... Continue Reading

Is the SharePoint bubble going to burst?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 11-Nov-2009

As subscribers who received our recent advisory paper know, there is plenty to be excited about in SP2010, especially if you are a part of the SharePoint channel of resellers, consultants, developers, and system integrators. But over the past few weeks I have been noticing something of a shadow side to this excitement ... Continue Reading

ICANN Welcomes the World

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Nov-2009

Last week the catchily-named organization ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced that it had approved the use of Hindi, Mandarin, Hebrew, Korean, and twelve other languages -- that are not based on the Roman/Latin alphabet -- for use in domain names ... Continue Reading

Record Managers and the threat of Cloud Computing

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Oct-2009

Last week I hosted a panel for ARMA that discussed compliance and records management issues related to Cloud Computing. It proved to be one of the most thought-provoking sessions I have been involved in for a long time. For what became abundantly clear from very early on was that records managers and compliance officers really need to get their head around Cloud Computing, and fast ... Continue Reading

SAP to resell Livelink

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Oct-2009

There is a some noise being made today about SAP's decision to become a reseller of Open Text's ECM products. Call me Mr Miserable, but I'm not sure that its really a game changer. SAP and Open Text have been involved in a long, torturous courtship, that so far has failed to result in a marriage ... Continue Reading

Say hello at ARMA Expo

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Oct-2009

Later this week I will be at the ARMA Expo in Orlando ... Continue Reading

CMIS already gaining traction?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 29-Sep-2009

I am a fan of AIIM and its market research, so I always make a point of reading and absorbing any new reports that come from them. The latest ... Continue Reading

Dealing with the ECM skills shortage

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Sep-2009

Enterprises are facing something of a recruitment dilemma at the moment -- one HR professional at a major healthcare firm told me this week that ECM-skilled applicants are looking for approximately 40% more in base pay than their peers with a background in CRM or ERP. This healthcare firm simply doesn't have budget to make the required hires, that is not an uncommon situation ... Continue Reading

2009 ECM Market Overview

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 24-Sep-2009

As I have said before, at CMS Watch we focus on evaluating individual vendors. Nevertheless, we do think it is important for every buyer to grasp a basic understanding of underlying market dynamics ... Continue Reading

Tail wagging the ECM dog

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Sep-2009

Sometimes a secondary service or subsystem in a content management platform can gum everything up.  This came to mind when a couple of our advisory clients ran into trouble with some non-core -- but important -- services. ... Continue Reading

Making sense of ECM acronyms

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 16-Sep-2009

One of the challenges we face at CMS Watch is the continuing need to bridge the gap between those new to ECM, and the deep industry insider knowledge that our subscribers seek ... Continue Reading

Can ECM ever be Agile?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Sep-2009

The past year or so IBM has been promoting the concept of "Agile ECM" in its marketing for FileNet P8. It is an interesting concept both at a marketing and implementation level regardless of whether P8 itself really fits such a label itself ... Continue Reading

Shadow IT and ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 27-Aug-2009

One of my favorite technology terms is "Shadow IT."  The term is not employed often enough, and its role in undermining good information management should be more widely broadcast, because Shadow IT represents a plague on content management ... Continue Reading

Adding structure to DAM and ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 27-Aug-2009

"Unstructured Data" is the fancy term we use to refer to "Content." Historically we've employed this term to differentiate "structured" data (sitting in neat rows and columns in a database) from complex files that typically need attached metadata for essential context ... Continue Reading

Cost of storage for ECM & DAM: Part 2

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 24-Aug-2009

I recently posted a piece regarding storage costs for ECM that seemed to garner some interest, so I thought I might just flesh out some of the assumptions I made in that a little further ... Continue Reading

Storage costs for ECM and DAM Systems

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Aug-2009

We have had an interesting internal discussion at CMS Watch the past few days, surrounding the cost of storage for content technology systems. It is a discussion that too few buyers have before embarking on costly ... Continue Reading

ECM: Transforming the US Healthcare System?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 11-Aug-2009

During a conversation with a journalist today about ECM and the US healthcare sector, we discussed why so little progress has been made toward electronic document and records management ... Continue Reading

XAM your ECM RFP

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Jul-2009

One standard/specification that gets little attention in the ECM world is XAM ... Continue Reading

2009 Enterprise Portals Market Overview

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 25-Jun-2009

We are not market researchers, but we do think it is important for every buyer to grasp a basic understanding of underlying market dynamics ... Continue Reading

Some lessons out of ECM vendor demo hell

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Jun-2009

Self immolation is a rare, some may say mythical event.  Yet in the world of content management it is more common than you might think ... Continue Reading

iManage and iPhone - something new, something old

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Jun-2009

This past week Search-cum-ECM vendor Autonomy announced that it was releasing an integration for its recently acquired WorkSite product with the iPhone ... Continue Reading

eXo merges with JBoss - a game changer?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Jun-2009

In the past week two open source portal initiatives decided to merge efforts: going forward eXo will now be a part of the Red Hat JBoss Portal ... Continue Reading

ECM thought of the week...

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Jun-2009

....Go to 10 companies with Documentum. In 8-9 of them you will find end-users that know the name ... Continue Reading

Making sense of CMS Watch....

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 11-Jun-2009

At CMS Watch we evaluate an awful lot of products, and making sense of all this research can be a challenge. ... Continue Reading

SOA and Records Management

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 5-Jun-2009

An announcement caught attention the other week, though I don't have much insight into the details yet. In short a new RM (Records Management) standard has emerged ... Continue Reading

EMC Documentum opens the kimono

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Jun-2009

Earlier this week EMC announced that it was providing more extensive development support for Documentum. This is something we had to comment on, as in our various product evaluations we have long called out EMC Documentum for providing relatively poor support ... Continue Reading

Venture Capital likes XML

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-May-2009

I noticed a bit of news from Mark Logic, one of the key vendors we evaluate in the Publishing Tools section of our ... Continue Reading

Why Open Text bought Vignette -- the real story

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-May-2009

This morning as I awoke at an ridiculously early hour (jet lag), to find my mailbox full of questions from journalists, commentators, and CMS Watch research subscribers asking for my take on the deal. ... Continue Reading

Objective plus Limehouse

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-May-2009

A couple of weeks back ECM vendor Objective announced that they had acquired Limehouse, a UK social software provider ... Continue Reading

New Compliance Course

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Apr-2009

Compliance is one of the watchwords of 2009... ... Continue Reading

XML Entering Into the Mainstream

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Apr-2009

Today we release The XML & Component Content Management Report 2009 ... Continue Reading

The ECM Maturity Model is a hit!

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 26-Mar-2009

A month ago we quietly launched a new maturity model for ECM. It was a two-year global effort among ... Continue Reading

Electronic Medical Records - No Slam Dunk

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 11-Mar-2009

Here in the US, the topic of electronic medical records has popped back to the top of the agenda, due to an impending mass injection of government money ... Continue Reading

Christening your ECM project

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 10-Mar-2009

It has always surprised me how many firms name their internal ECM applications and systems after the product that it runs on. ... Continue Reading

Ingres, Alfresco and an ECM appliance

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 25-Feb-2009

This week Alfresco, together with Ingres, announced the release of ... Continue Reading

New imaging course available

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 25-Feb-2009

It often becomes apparent to buyers that the most complex part of an ECM project is often the capture (imaging) portion ... Continue Reading

EMC presages broader rise in software audits?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-Feb-2009

Over the years I have heard of many enterprise software customers being audited by enterprise content management (ECM) vendors ... Continue Reading

Battling ECM and E2.0

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 20-Feb-2009

For the past year or so there seems to have been a battlefield of sorts emerging between proponents of social networking and all things E2.0 and the more traditional proponents of ECM ... Continue Reading

The problem of original content in a digital context

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Feb-2009

Methods and definitions in the world of Records Management (and subsequently ECM) have been long established and remain, in many cases, as valid today as they ever have. ... Continue Reading

The Legal Dept rescues Records Managers?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-Feb-2009

You really can't envy the task of records managers in the public or private sector. Many are still tasked with archiving hard copies of ... Continue Reading

Picking the right supplier in a recession

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Feb-2009

"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" -- so the saying goes ... Continue Reading

Enterprise Portal Education

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 6-Feb-2009

I am really pleased to announce that today our Enterprise Portals Certificate Education Course goes live ... Continue Reading

Documentum vs SharePoint - and the need for therapy

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 2-Feb-2009

Our job at CMS Watch involves more than simply writing and researching technology evaluations; we also spend a lot of time advising and guiding our customers ... Continue Reading

CMS Watch is hiring...

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Jan-2009

We're looking to hire a full-time Marketing Associate ... Continue Reading

Autonomy acquires Interwoven - A first take

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Jan-2009

Today Autonomy announced that they intend to buy Interwoven. ... Continue Reading

The ROI on a Records Manager

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Jan-2009

Retention Management was certainly a buzzword in 2008 ... Continue Reading

Pollyanna and the technology market

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Jan-2009

The technology sector has been nothing but doom and gloom recently, but a recent report by the Aite Group shines a bit more light on to what is a fairly complex market ... Continue Reading

HP and ECM - where to in 2009?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Jan-2009

Since HP acquired Tower Software almost a year ago, I thought it about time to review progress to date ... Continue Reading

Web Self Service - trend in 2009?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 10-Jan-2009

Customer-driven, web self-service will surely become a dominant theme for 2009. ... Continue Reading

EMC celebrates banner year by slashing jobs

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Jan-2009

Quarterly results have never been so closely scrutinized as they are right now. ... Continue Reading

Who loves the incumbent vendor?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 18-Dec-2008

One of my favorite little phrases is "double edged sword," and I found a perfect application for it recently, in a discussion of "incumbent" vendors ... Continue Reading

Vibrancy in the ECM market

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 16-Dec-2008

The ECM world is dominated by EMC, Open Text, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle -- all big vendors with equally big publicity machines to keep their brands and "story" right ... Continue Reading

Capture software to the fore

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 24-Nov-2008

As we start to look back on the past year, one of the key trends we have seen is the resurgence of interest in capture software ... Continue Reading

Some early thoughts on CMIS

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 24-Nov-2008

Since the announcement of CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Specification) I have been inundated with requests ... Continue Reading

A new definition of ECM?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 21-Nov-2008

It was the quote of the week: timely and definitive, perfectly summing up the value of ECM ... Continue Reading

Interwoven in a bullish mood

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Nov-2008

Yesterday I attended the Interwoven annual Analyst Day in New York. It was an interesting day in many respects ... Continue Reading

Scalable ECM?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-Oct-2008

One of the words that makes me most cringe when I hear or see it in vendor marketing is the word scalable ... Continue Reading

Autonomy, centralizing control of MOSS

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 21-Oct-2008

Every day I am assaulted by a barrage of press releases, almost all of which contain nothing of interest ... Continue Reading

Considering Storage

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 20-Oct-2008

I tend to be a bit "old school" when it comes to note taking and writing, something that can drive my colleagues ... Continue Reading

Google Postini, an announcement 'about nothing'

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-Oct-2008

In a week in which Symantec paid over half a billion dollars to buy a SaaS email archiving service, Google Postini announced that they would now ... Continue Reading

Symantec acquires MessageLabs

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 16-Oct-2008

Last week Symantec agreed to purchase MessageLabs, the UK-based SaaS e-mail archiving service for $695 million ... Continue Reading

In praise of user group meetings

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 16-Oct-2008

I have decided that I love user group meetings, and I want to go to more, so please invite me to yours... ... Continue Reading

SAP in the ECM shadows

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-Oct-2008

To know what's really going on within a firm or the industry in which it operates you need to watch where the money is flowing ... Continue Reading

ECM - the toolset for downsizing

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-Oct-2008

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technology goes back around 30 years, and at it's heart lies document management and workflow ... Continue Reading

Three continents, one SharePoint story

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 25-Sep-2008

SharePoint has been on my mind a lot recently, not least because we have been undertaking ... Continue Reading

The ECM Suites Report 2009 released today

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-Sep-2008

Today I'm proud to announce the release of the 2009 edition of The ECM Suites Report ... Continue Reading

ECM via Utrecht, Mumbai, and Bangalore

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Sep-2008

September this year sees an early start to the conference season, and I find myself first in the Netherlands and then off to India ... Continue Reading

Open Text, acquisition indigestion?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Sep-2008

Today I got a call from my friend Paul Steep at Scotia Capital regarding an Open Text announcement this morning ... Continue Reading

CMS Watch launches online ECM Technology Education

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Sep-2008

Today we are really excited to launch our latest online course, Fundamentals of ECM Technology ... Continue Reading

SAP looks to India for ECM?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 29-Aug-2008

Is SAP slowly moving into the ECM space? ... Continue Reading

A pat on the legal back for Interwoven

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Aug-2008

It wasn't news that rocked the world, and in fact most observers didn't even notice it, but I was struck ... Continue Reading

Virtual SharePoint?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Aug-2008

Last week Microsoft announced new licensing arrangement for its products, including SharePoint Server 2007 ... Continue Reading

CMS Watch consulting services

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Aug-2008

A question we are often asked is "Does CMS Watch provide consulting services?" In fact this question is asked so often, I thought a quick blog entry might be in order. ... Continue Reading

Plenty of choice for buyers in ECM's mid-market

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Aug-2008

Laserfiche is an ECM vendor we have been watching and writing about for a while, and our coverage of them in The ECM Suites Report is set to extend this year as we evaluate their new Rio offering ... Continue Reading

Alfresco as a SharePoint alternative

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 31-Jul-2008

Microsoft SharePoint goes open source? Shock, horror! Ok, well not quite, but an open source alternative to SharePoint is now an option with the release of Alfresco's Lab 3 beta product ... Continue Reading

Apache in the Outer Hebrides

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 31-Jul-2008

As we enter the peak of the vacation season, those of us fortunate enough leave the rat race and head off to distant shores. And it was whilst on a very distant shore this past week that I came across an advertisement that stopped me dead in my tracks ... Continue Reading

Open Text - acquire or be acquired?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Jul-2008

Open Text is back on the acquisition trail. The company announced Thursday that they ... Continue Reading

ECM buying tips from the experts

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 27-Jun-2008

This past week I had the pleasure of keynoting at the DocTrain event in Indianapolis (held at the truly magnificent Union Station venue), and also running a small session on "How to procure Content Technologies." ... Continue Reading

Legal ruling shakes up E-mail Archiving and Management Sector

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 27-Jun-2008

The whole issue of (E-mail Archiving and Management) EAM has come under the spotlight recently - triggered by ... Continue Reading

Fortiva acquired by Proofpoint - tread with caution

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 27-Jun-2008

Fortiva, the Canadian SaaS vendor has been acquired by Proofpoint. Interesting move for a couple of reasons ... Continue Reading

More ECM acquisitions for Oracle

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-Jun-2008

Oracle keeps moving down ECM trail with two new acquisitions to add to their growing portfolio. ... Continue Reading

The value of archiving and the limitations of e-discovery

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Jun-2008

Today we read about yet another major financial scandal allegedly exposed through the discovery of an e-mail message from ... Continue Reading

Adobe and Alfresco

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-Jun-2008

It's been a while since there was a big product announcement in the ECM world, but today's announcement by Adobe that they will be embedding Alfresco ... Continue Reading

EAM focused on the wrong elements?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 13-Jun-2008

This week I was speaking on the topic of EAM (E-Mail Archiving and Management) at the big SIFMA (Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association) event in New York ... Continue Reading

The basics of selecting an E-mail Archiving and Management system

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 6-Jun-2008

In our most recent report, E-mail Archiving & Management (EAM), we struggled early on in the research process to differentiate in a meaningful way ... Continue Reading

CMS Watch Competition Winner

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 2-Jun-2008

You may remember a while back we launched our little competition to come up with a new name for our vendor positioning chart ... Continue Reading

ECM equals GED in Brazil

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 2-Jun-2008

It's easy to forget just how big the world is -- but when you fly to Brazil as I did this past week, you can get some idea ... Continue Reading

Cloud Computing and Content Management

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 30-May-2008

If there is a buzz around Web 2.0 in the Content Technology community, then there is a roar in the wider IT community around Cloud Computing ... Continue Reading

Announcing the E-mail Archiving and Management Report

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 20-May-2008

This may well go down as the busiest period in CMS Watch's history as this month we launch yet another new technology evaluation report ... Continue Reading

Vendor criticism of CMS Watch

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 16-May-2008

As you know at CMS Watch we write critical product evaluations to help you avoid expensive procurement and deployment mistakes ... Continue Reading

Imaging - the most important element of ECM?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-May-2008

As an "Enterprise-focused" content management analyst, I am asked two basic questions on a regular basis ... Continue Reading

Content Management - UK vs. US

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 2-May-2008

On a flight back to Boston from London yesterday I took a little time to digest what I had observed during the past week in the UK. It was an odd week really, and somewhat disconcerting as the contrast between the US and the UK was quite stark ... Continue Reading

The E in ECM revisited

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 21-Apr-2008

I have used a slide called "The E in ECM" in various PowerPoint incarnations for years ... Continue Reading

Compliance is a dirty word

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Apr-2008

If there is one word I hate to hear used in this industry it's the word compliance ... Continue Reading

Oracle enters the E-mail Archiving market

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Apr-2008

Oracle announced today that they were entering the archiving market with the release of "Universal Online Archive." UOA is an interesting entry to a market ... Continue Reading

Symantec to OEM Autonomy technology

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Apr-2008

Blink and you might have missed it, but Symantec signed an important OEM deal with Autonomy the other day ... Continue Reading

Readers' challenge - name our new chart!

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 6-Apr-2008

Since moving to the US in 2002 I have become a fan of The Atlantic magazine, and in particular the last page of each edition that contains the "Word Fugitives" column ... Continue Reading

Oooh...an XML fight!

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Apr-2008

The world does seem to love an XML fight. ... Continue Reading

ECM Technologies and Recession

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Apr-2008

One topic that keeps coming up in conversations with buyers of content technologies -- and of course those that sell content technologies -- is the topic of a looming recession ... Continue Reading

HP expands archiving, e-discovery, and compliance portfolio with acquisition of Tower Software

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 31-Mar-2008

So HP finally made a move into the world of ECM by acquiring Tower Software of Australia ... Continue Reading

April ECM Workshop in Rome

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 25-Mar-2008

I'll be running a two-day intensive ECM workshop in Rome this April, geared for the needs of project implementation and selection teams -- as well as the business managers who oversee information management initiatives. ... Continue Reading

Want your ECM problem fixed?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 29-Feb-2008

This coming Wednesday at the big AIIM Expo in Boston we are hosting a session called "Fix your ECM problem." It's a bit of "serious" fun ... Continue Reading

Google Sites hardly a SharePoint killer -- but that's not the point

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Feb-2008

So Google has launched a product to compete with Microsoft's SharePoint, called Google Sites ... Continue Reading

Smart lawyers and ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Feb-2008

I sat in on the keynote panel at LegalTech in New York yesterday. As an old cynic I tend to think that I have heard it all before (and I probably have), but yesterday I was jolted awake by some quotes that left me ... Continue Reading

Independence and Industry Analysts

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 1-Feb-2008

Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes wrote an interesting piece about industry analyst firm The Aberdeen Group ... Continue Reading

Defining e-mail archiving versus e-mail management

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 29-Jan-2008

Terminology in the content technology business is a tricky thing to deal with: different interpretations of the same label can leave buyers confused, and mis-sold ... Continue Reading

Debunking the Google Generation Myth

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 29-Jan-2008

My thanks to our friend James Robertson for pointing to an important UK study that debunks many of the "Web 2.0" and "Google Generation" myths that ... Continue Reading

The reality of content security

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 24-Jan-2008

My colleague Jarrod forwarded a link to a news story of how one person deliberately destroyed 7 years worth of corporate content/data with ease ... Continue Reading

Oracle acquires....Captovation?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 16-Jan-2008

Blink and you would have missed it -- for lost in the all the headlines of ... Continue Reading

E-mail mayhem and nonsense

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 10-Jan-2008

I have recently become addicted to a TV program called Clean House, where they find people whose homes are a chaotic mess -- with junk and trash accumulating to the rafters ... Continue Reading

Thoughts on EMC's acquisition of Document Sciences

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-Jan-2008

So EMC (read: Documentum) acquired Document Sciences. The announcement came over the holiday period, and has already been ... Continue Reading

Worldwide ECM Events in 2008

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-Jan-2008

So the new year begins, and the first thing on my agenda is to run through my calendar for the year; 2008 brings a lot of potentially great events worldwide for ECM ... Continue Reading

The Joy of Buy-Side Conferences

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Dec-2007

I have just returned from a Copenhagen seminar event (organized by our good friend and colleague Janus Boye), and just prior to that the Oracle UK User Group conference in Birmingham. Both events were organized exclusively for end users ... Continue Reading

Backup is not Archiving

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 29-Nov-2007

Question: What's the difference between a backup and an archive? ... Continue Reading

What to make of Interwoven's SEC troubles?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 26-Nov-2007

Something appears to be quite amiss at Interwoven. On 15th November a notice of non-compliance was served against the company by NASDAQ. ... Continue Reading

Oracle and ECM Middleware: more than just Billy, Stevie, and Lenny

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 20-Nov-2007

It's easy to get lost in the maelstrom that is Oracle OpenWorld. With over 45,000 visitors, it takes over San Francisco each year. Its "appreciation" parties are legendary ... Continue Reading

Search at a tipping point?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Nov-2007

Has enterprise search finally reached the tipping point? Yes, seemed to be the conclusion of many of the experts here at the Enterprise Search Summit West ... Continue Reading

ECM Methodologies

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 25-Oct-2007

It would be interesting to know how many failed ECM projects stemmed from the wrong deployment methodology. I was pondering on this after a discussion with ... Continue Reading

Autonomy buys Meridio

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 23-Oct-2007

Major enterprise search vendor Autonomy announced today that they will acquire Meridio, the Northern Ireland-based Records Management vendor which had originally hitched its wagon to Microsoft SharePoint ... Continue Reading

Tracking KMWorld

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Oct-2007

Autumn is conference season here in the US, and one of the events I am most looking forward to is KMWorld in San Jose, California, from 6-8th November. ... Continue Reading

The SaaS ECM dilemma

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Oct-2007

At every talk or seminar I give on buying ECM technology, I stress to attendees that they have many different options -- including software as a service (SaaS). It's still early days for SaaS ECM, but the approach is now joining open source as a viable alternative to traditional software licensing models ... Continue Reading

WCM in Italy...and Europe

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Oct-2007

This week I led a seminar in Rome on Web Content Management organized by our friends Giovanni and Francesca at Technology Transfer. Both during the seminar sessions and in the ever-important espresso breaks, a key theme that I had noted on other recent visits re-emerged: European web teams are struggling to meet contemporary needs with outdated "enterprise-level" technologies ... Continue Reading

Will ECM play in Peoria?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-Oct-2007

One of things about being an industry analyst is you are exposed (whether you like it or not) to all the new trends, hypes, and ideas that the software industry promotes. You need to remain focused on your core areas (in my case all points ECM), and at the same time ensure that you remember to view your niche in a broader context ... Continue Reading

Compliant storage and archiving - an oxymoron?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Oct-2007

One of the great divides in the ECM world is the gulf between (and different understanding of) the needs of records management on the one hand, versus IT storage on the other ... Continue Reading

The E in ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 1-Oct-2007

These past few weeks as I have been working on the ECM Suites Report I pondered what it actually is that makes an ECM tool truly "Enterprise" ready ... Continue Reading

De-mystifying the Gartner ECM Magic Quadrant

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Sep-2007

Late last year we blogged on the 2006 Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) for ECM - and made the point that inclusion in the chart is believed by vendors to have a very positive impact on their sales. In the 2007 MQ - published this past week - it's clear that little (in Gartner's view) has changed in the ECM world. Well, we beg to differ ... Continue Reading

Discussing ECM in London this October

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 7-Sep-2007

On 17/18 October I will be hosting (along with Theresa) some round table discussions at the London Documation event ... Continue Reading

Uncle Sam cracks down on vendor selection abuse

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 5-Sep-2007

While nattering to a U.S. attorney while traveling back from Kuala Lumpur last week I was directed to this ongoing story. You can read all about it here, but in short the U.S. Department of Justice is suing Accenture for allegedly receiving kickback-like payments from technology suppliers it recommended and/or implemented at DOJ. The alleged fraud was a collusion with big-name IT suppliers (e.g., HP, Sun) and smaller vendors (e.g., Vignette) to ... Continue Reading

ECM in Malaysia

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Sep-2007

I am just back from speaking at the very first ECM Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- an excellent event that left me with many things to ponder. Top of the list is the term ECM itself ... Continue Reading

Open Text keeps up with Legal sector

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-Aug-2007

This past week ECM vendor Open Text announced that they will deliver a major upgrade to the acquired (ex-Hummingbird) eDocs technology for the Legal sector. Not earth-shattering news, but important news nonetheless ... Continue Reading

Open Source ECM continues to grow

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Aug-2007

South African open source ECM developer Knowledge Tree recently announced that their package has seen more than 380,000 downloads. Of course, veterans of open source projects will concede that downloads doth not a production implementation make ... Continue Reading

Documentum formally announces D6

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 5-Aug-2007

EMC|Documentum's long awaited "D6" was officially announced last week -- though of course it has actually been announced by the firm many times this year at different conferences. Although this official release fills in some of the blanks, there are few surprises. That's not to say this is not a significant event for the sometime market leader - it's a very big event for them - only in the past what Documentum did was a signal for all to follow. The tide has turned somewhat, and Documentum under the ownership of EMC finds itself as much a follower as a leader these days. ... Continue Reading

Measuring SharePoint Growth

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 28-Jul-2007

MS SharePoint continues to grow at a pace - in a presentation to Financial Analysts earlier this week, Microsoft stated that in the past year they have seen year over year 35% growth and revenues of a staggering $800 Million US. They also claim ... Continue Reading

A new marketplace greets Documentum D6

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 26-Jul-2007

Just a year or two ago, a major upgrade to the Documentum ECM platform would have been dominant news in the industry, but things change, and quickly. D6, the latest version of EMC|Documentum's flagship platform, is undertaking a gradual roll-out through Q3 2007 to muted fanfare. EMC and its investors have high expectations for this new version, as the Documentum division of the company has shown only modest growth of 5% in the past year, lower than most competitors. ... Continue Reading

EMC acquires Xhive

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 20-Jul-2007

Today EMC announced it is to acquire XHive the Netherlands-based, XML-focused content management vendor. XHive has carved out a niche for itself ... Continue Reading

Hyland Software acquired

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-Jul-2007

Hyland Software, developer of OnBase ECM, has been acquired (58% controlling stake) by a private equity firm for $265 million -- quite a substantial sum for a firm that posted revenues around $70 million. What does it mean for buyers of Hyland's software? ... Continue Reading

Oracle tackles files in the database, again

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Jul-2007

Today Oracle announced the latest upgrade to its flagship database: 11g. The announcement brooks great interest within the ECM community because ... Continue Reading

Change methodologies and ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 5-Jul-2007

People have always debated whether or not to embrace formal management and change methodologies when implementing enterprise content management (ECM). Should you employ a formal methodology or just use your best judgment and experience? I think you need both. ... Continue Reading

Microsoft, Big ECM, and Big Pharma

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 3-Jul-2007

This year's big DIA (Drug Information Association) conference in Atlanta concluded with something of a shock for traditional ECM vendors. ... Continue Reading

ECM and Integration

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 2-Jul-2007

"Integration" is a hot topic with Enterprise Content Management vendors these days. But just like terms such as BPM or SOA, integration can many things to many people. The current focus on integration stems in large part to vendor repositioning work. They are starting to recognize that for long term survival they have to play nicely with other business applications and -- whether they like it or not -- other ECM systems. ... Continue Reading

The ECM - SOA divide

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 26-Jun-2007

In the content management world I sense something of a brewing backlash against SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), but I wonder how real or or even practical this is. With most Fortune 2000 firms are already way down the path with SOA, there seems to be no turning back. At the enterprise architecture level, there is no Plan B. ... Continue Reading

True ECM for Salesforce.com?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 20-Jun-2007

The story begins with Computer Associates (CA), who spun off its Ingres line into a separate, open source project. Ingres is now teaming up with open source ECM provider Alfresco. The Ingres "Icebreaker" product (linux + database stack) will offer an ECM option provided via Alfresco. ... Continue Reading

ECM in a box?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-Jun-2007

Our guest analyst Apoorv Durga pointed me to InfoGrid a Singapore-based vendor that is now selling an ECM "appliance." I have not looked inside the box yet, but plan to do so and will report back with what I find. But at first glance ... Continue Reading

ECM and BPR in 2007

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 31-May-2007

Another conversation today and another datapoint to contribute to my growing belief that large enterprises are now re-embracing re-engineering. It seems that there is only so much streamlining you can do until you reach a point where you need to completely rethink a situation. ... Continue Reading

Documentum announces Transactional Content Management

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 22-May-2007

Transactional document management (high-volume throughput of relatively static documents) has long been dominated by IBM and FileNet. EMC today announced that it too wants to compete in this lucrative market. Hence as part of its forthcoming Documentum D6 release, they have announced "TCM" (Transactional Content Management). ... Continue Reading

Another departure at EMC-Documentum

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 18-May-2007

How many good people can you lose before things start to suffer? The answer is usually not too many -- but in EMC's Documentum division we have now seen the departure of ... Continue Reading

Another perspective on vendor demos

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 17-May-2007

Tony has provided some advice to vendors regarding product demos. Those 10 points make essential reading, but there is another perspective. Since I have personally sat in on those demos both as a buyers' advisor and as a vendor (system integrator), I need to add several points to the list. ... Continue Reading

When Search and ECM collide

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-May-2007

"When Search & ECM Collide" was the title of a tutorial I ran in New York yesterday. It's an important topic to explore as both Search vendors and ECM vendors both seem to believe that ... Continue Reading

Compliance is not a big driver for ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 11-May-2007

I have just been reminded of one of the fundamentals involved in business process change (while reading through Dan Madison's excellent book on the topic): the principal of "Away From" and "Go To" reasons for change. ... Continue Reading

Looking beyond North America for your ECM vendor

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 10-May-2007

It's not surprising that enterprises around the world typically first consider major North American vendors like EMC, IBM, and Open Text for their ECM needs, considering the millions those companies pour into marketing efforts. But buyers should look beyond the marketing, as many regional vendors may well have good technology solutions ... Continue Reading

The E in big-time ECM means cutting costs, improving processes

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 30-Apr-2007

At the recent AIIM Expo I had the privilege to lead a panel, "When E Means Big," where customers revealed lessons learned in truly huge ECM deployments, as opposed to the "regular" world of ECM. What struck me was how the discussion barely touched on technology, but instead gravitated toward such issues as Governance, Strategy, Funding, and Ownership. A strong consensus emerged ... Continue Reading

Thoughts on ECM as a service

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 24-Apr-2007

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AIIM Expo and the ECM marketplace

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 20-Apr-2007

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Salesforce.com as ECM vendor

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 10-Apr-2007

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ECM rising?

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 9-Apr-2007

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Considering smaller ECM vendors

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 27-Mar-2007

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Subjective about the future of Objective

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 11-Mar-2007

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ECM skills shortage

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 6-Mar-2007

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Not dominating ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 19-Feb-2007

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IBM digests FileNet

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Feb-2007

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Top ten reasons why your ECM system runs slowly

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 12-Jan-2007

1. The average size of electronic documents has grown to a point whereby current network bandwidth is insufficient to deliver documents to the user in a sensible time frame.

ECM Suite is an oxymoron

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 5-Jan-2007

A recent blog post argued that vendors often drive discussions with buyers rather that the other way round. In that vein, I would like to state for the benefit of anyone considering buying ECM technology that there is really no such thing as an "ECM Suite" -- not beyond product labeling and marketing that is. ... Continue Reading

NetApp dips toe in ECM waters

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 31-Dec-2006

When EMC acquired Documentum there was much speculation that main rival NetApp would gobble up FileNet. Instead, NetApp acquired by accident a new channel - as other ECM vendors suddenly wanted to keep a distance between EMC|Documentum, and though NetApp didn't acquire FileNet they began a fairly intense relationship. ... Continue Reading

ECM Marketplace - Blind leading the blind

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 20-Dec-2006

If you think overcoming the marketing hype that surrounds an "ECM Suite" is hard (it is for me, and I do this for a living!) then you might presume that talking to enterprise content management vendors directly could resolve your confusion. That would seem logical, but recall that all the major ECM vendors have either been acquiring or been acquired in the past few years.... ... Continue Reading

ECM and Enterprise Security

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 14-Dec-2006

Today James Governer prompted a discussion on his famous blog regarding ECM and Security. He raises some very good questions while lobbying other enterprise buyers to team with him to pressure ECM vendors to respond. I'm sure many ECM vendors will be secretly annoyed ... Continue Reading

Of magic quadrants and buyers' choices

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 8-Dec-2006

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New e-discovery rules: New opportunity for better lifecycle management

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 4-Dec-2006

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Sceptical about wikis in the Enterprise

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 1-Dec-2006

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Documentum-EMC to offer embedded ECM

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 20-Nov-2006

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Open Text releases Livelink 10

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe on 15-Nov-2006

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